I'm sorry to say that I really don't know you all that well, Miss Streatfield. Our acquaintance has been of a limited sort; you haven't been one of the author's who I have come to know extensively through biographies and such. As it happens, all I really know about you is that you have written the Shoes books, and I have read- but really, isn't that the usual connection between author and reader? The author writes, and the reader reads. Perhaps the reader becomes so enthralled in that person who has written a book that has become so beloved to them that they go searching for every book they can find about that person and their life. Perhaps the book is enjoyed for an hour, and then set away, and both author and book are forgotten.
I think the true test of a book though, is not the book that sends the reader running for ten others by that author. Or the book that has the reader finding biographies and searching for information on the Internet. It is the book that comes to the reader's mind when someone asks about "good books," years after that book has been read.
You're books are just that.
It has been years since I was about ten years old and reading Ballet Shoes for the very first time, but if a little girl of about ten-ish years were to come and ask me for a recommendations, I would think of Pauline, Petrova and Posy right away. It was only about a week or so ago when I was shelving books at the library that I came across a little hardback book with the title of Party Shoes, and I put it in my stack of books to take home with me because I remembered how much I loved the other Shoes books. I'm still going to read that other book of yours, actually, I just discovered what a quite a lot of books you have written that I haven't read yet. Isn't it such a nice thing to think how many books out there that are yet to be discovered and read? I hope I will never be without a stack of fifteen books to read, it would be such a waste of time when there are so many out there that there sometimes never seems enough time.
Perhaps someday I shall even find a biography about you, but for now, know that those books of yours that I have read I would recommend for everyone, no matter what their age. Know how much my ten year old self loved those books of yours, and how three of them still remain on my crammed bookshelf, though the books surrounding them have changed from American Girl and Boxcar Children books to Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell. (Of course I still have my American Girl and Boxcar books, they're just being read by younger siblings now days.)
I'm trying to think which of the three was my favorite...I believe when I was younger it was Theater Shoes (For a while it was the book that convinced me that I wanted to be an actor) but the one I remember the best now is Ballet Shoes. Dancing Shoes is the third book that remains on my bookshelf and I love it as well. I hope when my baby sister gets old enough she will love them just as well as I always did.
Sincerely, Emily
